Story highlights
Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and other Republicans are meeting Thursday
The House speaker is taking steps to unify the party
Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan concluded their highly anticipated meeting Thursday amid signals that the Republican Party will work to piece itself together after a fractious primary.
“While we were honest about our few differences, we recognize that there are also many important areas of common ground,” Trump and Ryan said in a joint statement. “We will be having additional discussions, but remain confident there’s a great opportunity to unify our party and win this fall, and we are totally committed to working together to achieve that goal.”
Ryan, speaking with reporters during his weekly press briefing, sought to portray his openness to Trump, despite withholding his endorsement.
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“This is our first meeting, I was very encouraged with this meeting, but this is a process. It takes some time, you don’t put it together in 45 minutes,” he said.
The speaker called Trump’s achievement of earning more votes than any Republican candidate in history “really kind of unparalleled,” and clearly hopes to channel the support for the presumptive nominee into support for a conservative policy agenda writ large.
“The question is … how we unify it all? How do we keep adding and adding and adding voters while not subtracting any voters?” he said. “Most Americans do not like where this country is headed.”
Trump tweeted his thoughts while his plane taxied on the runway before taking off for New York, “Great day in D.C. with @SpeakerRyan and Republican leadership. Things working out really well!”
“I thought it was a great meeting,” Trump said in a Thursday evening interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity.
Trump suggested the two sides would eventually come together.
“I don’t mind going through a little bit of a slow process,” Trump said. “We’re getting there.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus – who helped broker the meeting – told CNN’s Dana Bash the meeting was “great,” and “a good first step toward unifying our party.”
“This was not a usual election, it was a very contentious, tough primary,” he said. “I think they had very good chemistry between the two of them.”
Speaking later in the day to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Priebus said Trump and Ryan plan to be back in contact and that could be as soon as Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters his meeting with Trump was “constructive” and that they spoke about a “variety of things, both campaign related and issues.
The meeting at RNC headquarters marked a watershed moment.
For Trump, the meeting tested his ability to reconcile with the Washington establishment that he and the voters have scorned.
For Ryan, it will help shape his own future with a party increasingly impatient to get behind its nominee and win back the White House.
A top Trump aide had said there are “no expectations at all” of an immediate Ryan endorsement, describing the Thursday session as an “opening conversation” in an ongoing process of party unification.
Senators who met with Trump said they discussed a range of issues from immigration to tax policy and were impressed at how “genial” and “affable” he was in person. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said he understood that Trump is more of a “showman” in public.
He said he suggested to Trump that he find a new way to talk about immigration, and referenced his experience as a border state senator.
“There’s some issues that Trump is clear on, but they shouldn’t be scary for our members. Our members have always said they believe in ending the lawlessness of illegal immigration and always said we have to have trade agreements that are good,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, the first senator to endorse Trump who has served as a liaison between the campaign and his Senate colleagues.
According to a source familiar with the meeting, Trump told House leadership he would come out with a list, assisted by conservative groups The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, of judicial nominations he would make if he had the opportunity to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Trump also said the members present at the meeting should submit names to him and he would put them on the list.
A few of the House leadership members pushed Trump on abortion – he has voiced views to the left of the GOP on the issue – and Trump confirmed repeatedly that he was not interested in changing the party’s platform.
The scene
Hordes of reporters mobbed the front entrance of the GOP headquarters and gathered across the street from an alleyway behind the building, but Trump’s motorcade evaded the glare of the cameras and led the presumptive GOP nominee to the back entrance.
Inside, Trump was slated for a slew of meetings, the first of which was with Ryan and Priebus, who brokered the meeting in hopes of gluing the GOP’s jagged divisions back together after Trump became the presumptive nominee and Ryan dropped a bombshell last week by refusing to back the brash billionaire.
Trump also met with the rest of the House Republican leaders, only one of whom – Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington – has not yet endorsed Trump and is holding out alongside Ryan.
Trump then headed to meet with Senate Republican leadership before he departs Washington around 2 p.m.
Democrats, meanwhile, were more than happy to paint Trump and congressional and party GOP leaders as already united.
“I guess he should be giddy about a Trump presidency. Donald Trump is everything that (McConnell) and his party could ever want in a nomination,” said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid on the Senate floor, adding that Trump’s “positions are identical to the Republican Party platform.”
Immigration activists and other protesters were on site Thursday morning to reinforce the division Trump has sowed in the country, holding signs calling the presumptive nominee “dangerous,” “divisive” and “deceitful.” A Trump impersonator with a bullhorn held bags with dollar signs printed on them.
But Priebus left the meeting reassured that Trump would be able to appeal to communities of color that Trump largely alienated during the primary season.
“Tone and tenor matter, and I think Donald Trump understands that, too,” Priebus told Blitzer on “The Situation Room,” saying that real estate magnate “absolutely” could do well with minority voters.
Assurances
In private and in public, Ryan is sending the message his party wants to hear: The GOP will be united this fall.
In a private meeting in his office Wednesday, Ryan told his colleagues who support Trump that his high-profile sit-down with the billionaire businessman would be the start of a continual dialogue between the speaker’s office and the presidential campaign, sources said.
Speaking to the full House GOP Conference in the basement of the Capitol, Ryan suggested that the party’s focus this fall will be on defeating Hillary Clinton – not the internal GOP bloodbath.
“The United States cannot afford another four years of the Obama White House, which is what Hillary Clinton represents,” Trump and Ryan said in their statement following the meeting. “That is why it’s critical that Republicans unite around our shared principles, advance a conservative agenda, and do all we can to win this fall.”
